Chapter Text
Some people wake up on the wrong side of the bed.
Other people are merely a victim of circumstance. They were sleeping perfectly fine, until they were suddenly and violently flipped over on the wrong side, like an unseasoned omelet on a cheap pan - because someone else woke up that day feeling silly.
This is one such day.
And it all starts in the Hollow House attic. The two boys are held up downstairs and have made the kind of decision that only people without young kids can make - they told Prunella to just go on ahead into today’s adventure.
Thus, bundled in Prunella’s arms, a feral bag of brown fur and spit and teeth hisses a low growl. Without even the slightest ounce of fear, she readjusts to get a better grip on the racoon and says again. “I want Henry with me.”
Henry snarls in agreement.
The keys are grouped on the table watching this show with a varying palette of reactions.
“Why of course, if your furry friend wishes to join your adventures, we must honour his wish post haste!” Goldie claps his hands.
Silver seems to be putting considerable effort into not showing fear. “…Can we even take animals into books?”
Bronze shrugs. “Nothing in canon says we can’t.”
Silver blinks. “What?”
“What?”
She stares. Bronze picks some peanut crumbs out of his teeth and does not elaborate.
Prunella drops her chin on top of the racoon. “Okay Agent Henry, it’s time for take-off.”
──── ≪ ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ≫ ────
Once upon a time, there was a kingdom called Fruitland. It was a berry sweet sight to behold, the fruitiest of fruity vacation spots that made any traveller go bananas. The young princess was the apple in the King’s eyes, but her sugary sweetness was not to the taste of everyone. The evil Queen grew so envious of her daughter, so that she turned purple and ordered all fruits and veggies who weren’t rotten like her, to be banished from the kingdom.
Now, with the power of Sir Pesticide by her side, the princess has vowed to save her kingdom.
The evil Queen stands in her gradious throne room, the hollow husk of an old sugar pumpkin carved into an evil, better purpose. It is empty of people, but dripping in malice and rot. The Queen chuckles to herself.
“Why, do my eyes decieve me? Is that fear coursing through your roots?”
She pauses, then nods to herself.
Menacingly, she saunters down the squishy steps. “My dear princess, tell me, does the sight of me strike you still? Do my purple skin sow seeds in your… garden of…”
She glances around the room for stage directions. It smells. She’s been trying not to think about it. Out the corner of her eye, she sees the chandelier dripping something brown and… drippy.
The Queen throws the metaphorical towel on the gross floor.
Nox groans. “Urgh! How am I supposed to work under these conditions! Her lair is filthy! I can’t lean on anything!”
The reason the villainess has landed in such a position is due to a long series of circumstances, starting yesterday. It involved a sidekick, a pack of brainwashed ice ferrets and a magic staff aimed at said sidekick.
If asked, the villainess would see himself as entirely innocent, as he was simply asserting his natural position at the top of the food chain, and also, Freckles is so going to pay.
“Chase, why would you agree to this!?” Nox rants, as he made his grape escape through the lair and towards the sweet, sweet smell of fresh air. “My character is a rotted eggplant! I’d say any insult was lowhanging fruit, but it was already down in the disgusting, poultry DIRT!”
He makes it outside, where the forest floor has about the same appetising pallette as a burn piece of toast.
Scowling, he waits for the peanut gallery to turn up and hopes he can at least get a nice Chase outfit out of this whole rot fest. His foot taps impatiently, as the minutes drag on.
Nox stands in the clearing for long enough that a curious fruit animal approaches him and tries to entertain itself with his cape.
Not even looking down, he shoves it away with his foot — no more fruit stains for him, thank you. The animal bends around his shove like a bag of fleshy water.
Nox does a double take. Looking down, he sees a brown raccoon.
“You’re not fruit.” he says dumbly.
The raccoon sniffs his shoe. Then it looks up at him with tiny beady eyes that say I know what you are.
Despite not being fluent in raccoon-nese, Nox has a fine tuned sense for when someone’s talking shit and he glares at pint size, daring it to start a scrap it's gonna lose. He was once the king of the dumpsters, he can be it again.
This decision will soon come to haunt him.
The raccoon bears its tiny teeth and growls at Nox.
Nox turns his nose up at it, which is essentially the posh man’s version of growling back.
Henry coils up like a spring. Henry jumps an impressive 6 feet in the air. Henry Attack.
Unprepared for the consequences of his own actions, Nox lets out a screech as he suddenly and violently gets a face full of angry raccoon.
This is how the Hollow heroes finds their esteemed villainess. In a fight against a feral bundle of brown fur and fleas that he's only winning thanks to his significant height advantage.
“WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?!” Nox roars. “FRECKLES, YOU WILL RUE THE DAY YOU CROSSED ME— AARGH!”
Deacon signs his own death warrant as he sees Nox’s predicament and snorts loudly.
Meanwhile, Chase’s ability to point out the obvious never fails to amaze. “What— that’s not fruit!”
It looks like he’s wearing a very nice outfit - cyan, sparkles, all the good stuff - that Nox would love to appreciate if his ears weren’t currently getting pierced.
“NO SHIT!”
“Dude, how is that here?!”
“Well, obviously it’s—”
Prunella bursts out of the bushes, her dress covered in fruit stains and beelining for Nox.
“Agent Henry, stand down!”
Agent Henry, on account of getting only the most barebone agent training needed for a license to kill, does not respond to the order. It currently has its claws sunk deep into Nox’s hair and isn’t intending on letting go.
“Ow- ow ow ow- OW!”
“Target is detained, let go Agent!”
“TARGET?!”
Through sheer grit and determination, Prunella helps unclaw Henry from Nox like one would a particularly stubborn magnet. Nox immediately makes a brave escape.
Henry screeches very unhappily, until Prunella starts distracting it with head scratches and it turns to puddy in her arms.
“You sicced your pet on me?!” He gapes.
“No.” Prunella curls protectively around the ball of fur. “He was fine and then he smelled your jerk cologne.”
“I—” Nox pauses, then switches his glare over to the boys approaching them. “Chase, did you teach the kid to say ‘jerk cologne’?”
“I’m just a natural-born trend setter, I can’t help it.”
“Congratulations, you’ve inspired a new generation of bad taste.”
Prunella and her pet sends Nox a final flare, before she runs off towards the woods and whatever game she was playing with her new bestie.
Chase trails over to Nox’s side. His voice is painted with a concerning degree of fascination. “You can bring animals into books?”
Nox sighs, as he attempts to dust off his outfit. “Technically, yes. The creator hasn't closed that loophole yet.”
“Also, you alright?” Chase gives him a look, and reaches up to help fix Nox’s tousled hair.
“Never mention this again.” Nox grumbles. He swears he saw the little fleabag stick its tongue out at him.
“Buddy, you know I can't do that.”
“Remind me why you're the heroine?”
“Cause I’m hot and dashing and best friends with Pru’s pet?”
Nox scoffs, though his feathers become slightly less ruffled. “Best friends hardly counts when you can make the animals like you.”
“Wanna bet? Loser takes princey duty next book.” Chase grins.
Nox grins back. “Be my guest.”
The two of them are broken out of their bubble, as a hand grabs each of their collars and starts unceremoniously dragging them towards the castle.
“Sometime this week, you two.” Deacon says without any inflection. “We got narratonin to gather, places to be, walls to stare blankly at while we contemplate how we got to this point in our lives, et cetera, et cetera.”
The previous night when Deacon had found an excellent revenge book full of gross things and clapped himself on the back for his idea, he had failed to consider the simple sidenote that he would also have to go into the gross revenge book and that had put him in a very foul mood indeed. Plus, Bronze thought it would be funny if he dressed Deacon in a full geared out exterminator outfit, so at this point, the boys better stop being pests unless they want a face full of repellent.
The adventure continues. By the power of sponsored pesticides and friendship, the princess challenges the Evil Queen to a great harvest.
Chase tries to befriend Henry, but due to the strong scent of jerk cologne hanging over him, the raccoon growls very loudly that it knows a sell out when it smells one.
The Evil Queen loses the great harvest.
Prunella shares a sugar cane with her friend and invites a moopy Deacon to join.
With the wickedness of organic produce defeated, the Kingdom gathers around the castle and celebrates their victory. Even the now pesticided Queen is allowed to join. In the end, they lived happily ever after.
Just as the light engulfs them and Nox thinks he’s finally done with this horrible adventure, the raccoon in Prunella’s arms slowly turns its face up to pin him with a final stare. Two black voids bore straight into his soul and seem to lock onto something, as if in that moment, it just slapped a tracker on his forehead. Return policy not included.
I’ll be back, the black beady eyes seem to promise. Then they disappear into the light.
A strange sense of impending doom runs up Nox’s spine.
──── ≪ ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ≫ ────
Down below the Sugar Spring library, there is a little Lost and Found storage. It’s not a very well used storage, as someone in the town commitee decided it was a good idea to place it in very back of the building, tucked between old encyclopedia and outdated PHP programming guides. Needless to say, not many people dared to venture down into the depths of the Lost and Found out of fear for dust pollution.
This is exactly what makes it a perfect hiding space for two tiny keys, who fear neither dust pollution nor fossilised litterature. They are safe, as long as no human sets their foot down here, and that, they are certain, is unlikely.
The two keys wander peacefully around the floor — Violet looking for a glint of gold she had spotted earlier in the day and Nox looking for that piece of chocolate he had dropped, also earlier in the day.
Scritch, scritch, scratch.
Nox looks up. “Did you hear that?”
Violet doesn’t get the chance to answer.
SCRIIIITCH SCRAAAATCH.
Metaphorically speaking, in that moment, the Jaws theme begins to play.
They both snap their heads to the sound and a moment later - the door to the Lost and Found is pushed ajar. A great big snout peaks through the crack. It sniffs the air testingly, a pause lingers and then a growl reverberates through the entire room.
Nox knows that growl. Only this time, the growl isn’t coming from some little berry bush pisser in kicking height, it’s coming from a creature several times his size who sounds like the rumbling engine of a train.
“Violet…” He says, slowly backing away. He can feel the confused look she’s sending him, but what little is left of his human survival instincts are too busy kicking in. “Run!”
He grabs Violet’s arm and beelines for cover. The sound of their intruder thunders down the stairs behind him, and with a sharp inhale, Violet doesn’t need to be told twice.
The two keys sprint for their tiny lives, escaping into a small crevice between two boxes. A large snout pushes in moments later, not reaching them, but its wheezing sniffs filling their ears. They can hear its claws scraping against the exterior.
“It’s Prunella’s stupid pet!” Nox shouts, as him and Violet pushes themselves as far back against the corner as they can.
“Prunella?”
“Uh,” Nox scrambles, now wishing he could bite his tongue off.
“Who’s Prunella!?” Violet snaps.
“She’s Goldie key user,” he scrambles, “they, uh, I might have met her a couple weeks ago? That might be why I was mad that one time?”
A genuine flicker of hurt passes over Violet’s face, before it clamps behind steel. “They found Goldie and you didn’t tell me?!”
Was it bad if he said it had literally slipped his mind with everything that happened in the waterlogged book? Yes, that was a reasonable explanation.
Large animalistic whines brings him back into the present. Nox curses himself for not kickdropping the kid the second he laid his eyes on her.
“What else is there? Huh?!” Violet pokes him in the chest, raising her voice to combat the noise of their intruder. “What, next you gonna tell me that you’ve kissed the heroine?”
“No!” Nox denies way too quickly.
Her mouth falls open in horror.
Then, a paw breaks through and swipes right over their heads. They shriek and dodge to the side, running for cover behind the other books.
“Nox, I will skin you and wear you like a shitty coat, if this bag of fleas doesn’t do it first!”
──── ≪ (◎_◎;) ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ≫ ────
This marks the day that the siblings of evil started sleeping with one eye open.
Nox would have been kicked out of their shared space for being a dirty human kisser, but the circumstances didn't allow room for such internal fighting.
The raccoon begins to prowel the Lost and Found. It shuffles up and down the aisle for hours on end, then leaves for just long enough that the siblings can have the traitorous thought that it may have gotten bored with them. Only for the sound of scraping claws to return.
At one point they are sure that the library humans have finally gotten their heads screwed on right and noticed the vermin that keeps sneaking in, but not a day later, the small window tucked away in an upper corner of the room creaks open instead. The vermin chitters in a way that sounds an awful lot like a victorious tee hee.
It has a terrible knack for finding every one of their hiding places. Even going up on a high shelf can only protect them for so long, as the raccoon is bound to find some stack of boxes or a rigidity chair that it can use as an impromptu awful stair case that nobody asked for.
Nox doesn’t know yet what it feels like to be stuck between its teeth or whether its breath is so prugent that even a tin man can smell it and he would like not to find out, thank you very much.
The trail of destruction left by their intruder becomes bad enough, that eventually Nox bites the sour apple. During an adventure, he turns to the person least likely to ask follow up questions.
Going for casual, Nox asks. “If you had a… rodent problem, how would you make the problem go away?”
Chase looks up from the basket that he’s trying to knit. Badly. “Well-” He spits out a string. “You gotta tell it who’s boss. Get a broom and shake it in the air, y’know, tell it to shoo.”
“…I’ll take it into consideration.” Nox says slowly.
“You should take me into consideration.”
"Please think about the words that come out of your mouth."
Chase laughs, and he doesn't ask, which are both exactly why he’s Nox’s favorite human.
“Hey," he says, "you think a blue string would look nice in—”
Later that same day.
Nox stands bravely in a lower shelf and shakes a needle almost as tall as himself.
Glaring at his collosal opponent, who's watching him curiously, he shouts. “Back! Back, you bug-eyed tramp!”
He makes a great jap at his opponent. The opponent rears its head slightly back, like there’s an annoying fly in front of it's face. It chitters mockingly at him.
But its arrogance becomes its undoing. Nox uses the opportunity to launch himself up and with a great swing, he slices a thin gash across Henry’s nose.
Henry rears back with a screech. Nox makes a superhero landing, his metal knees denting the shelf and for a second, he feels like a million bucks.
“Oh my god, Goldie should have seen that!” He springs up. “Violet— Violet did you see that!?”
Violet did not see that, as she has made the calculated choice of not approaching the tall, big, feral and possibly disease ridden predator if she can ever help it. She does however see what follows afterwards.
See, raccoons are clever creatures, intuitive and on a rare occasion, friendly. They just happen to be born with the unfortunate condition that all of their thoughts are compactly stuffed into a brain the size of a pea. Which is to say, rational concepts such as fear or intimidation have the same effect on a raccoon, as a well aimed pebble would against the walls of Fort Nox.
Henry rubs its snout, before its face falls into the raccoon equivalent of ‘you done goofed up’ underscored by a low hiss. Nox’s grip tightens on his spear.
“Little Mister-Princess-Kisser, stop antagonising the vermin!” Violet shouts, from several shelves higher up. “If you splat on the ground, I am not risking my hair for you!”
“Well, someone has to teach the vermin who’s bos— dammit!”
A great big claw swipes at Nox, but he is speed, a ballerina and though it comes at the loss of his spear, he swiftly jumps out of its reach.
Within a split second, Nox realises he has just made a grave error.
He looks down.
Oh bollocks, he thinks, because he had indeed jumped back so far, that he is now facing a distinct lack of shelf beneath him. Specifically, he is over the tiny gap between shelves.
Then, gravity cracks its knuckles and gets to work.
Nox falls and on his way down collides between the two sides like the ball in a pinball machine. Sound effects included.
Amazingly, Nox’s tiny metal body bounces down in the exact pattern of the Wii theme song.
He hears the distinct clang of Violet smacking her forehead somewhere high above him. Then a scream, as the raccoon deems her a closer target and begins climbing.
──── ≪ (◎_◎;) ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ≫ ────
Violet comes up with a plan. It is geniusly simple: Once the vermin leaves to get food or whichever things vermin gets up to, they spread out across the room and knock down as many boxes as they can. No boxes to climb, no way for it to reach their hiding spots. Then eventually, it’ll surely realise the futility of its actions and get bored of trying.
It’s a good plan. It would work with any sane animal that Nox had happened to piss off.
Unfortunately for the siblings of evil, there's another thing to note about raccoons. Besides the miniature size of their brains, it is well known that once a raccoon forms a grudge, it will center its entire being around that grudge and then one day it will die.
It looks at the graveyard of boxes and takes it as a challenge, instead opting to for a round of Super Mario-parkour.
If they ever want a chance of getting rid of their pest problem, they have to go to the source. The best plan they come up with is to enact their will upon the real world through the books, where their physical might is much greater.
In other words, threaten the humans however possible and have them make the stupid racoon go away.
That plan is… well, it is certainly A Plan.
“Pru, I am going to stuff your face into a toilet!” Nox shouts.
Prunella is sitting high up on the branch of a tree. Nox is down on the ground and glaring like it’s going to teleport him up there.
She sticks her tongue out. “You can't get me, dumb dumb. Stop wearing heels. They're bad for climbing, if there’s an apocalypse tomorrow, you’d be really dead.” She rolls her eyes. “I keep telling Mom.”
“Either jail your stupid pet or come down here!” Nox yells uselessly, in heels. He swears his threat is 50% less empty than usual.
“I'm telling Deacoooon.” She says.
Nox scoffs. “Hah, as if that's going to-”
Prunella swings her legs. “I'll tell him you called me a squirrel with rabies and you chased me up a tree and,” she folds her arms, turning her nose up, “he’ll pick a really really gross book for you.”
Nox narrows his eyes. “You wouldn't.”
“You were mean to Henry, you deserve it!”
“He started it!”
“He’s waaay smaller than you. You're being a baby. He hasn't even been in the books with us in forever.”
“He’ll give me rabies!”
“You can't get rabies in a BOOK!”
“CONTROL YOUR GODSFORSAKEN PET!”
Yes. The plan is certainly A Plan.
──── ≪ (◎_◎;) ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ≫ ────
Nox hears Chase running up to him, long before he sees him. He breathes in and out, and braces himself for what’s about to happen.
“Hey, Buddy-” Chase pauses. “Oh dude, you look…”
“I know.”
“It’s… uh, does Violet accept constructive feedback?”
“She doesn’t.”
“Oh.”
Nox’s outfit for the cutthroat Madam Bourbon possesed all the makings of a striking funeral wear — but somewhere along the way it was as if Violet had fallen asleep on the sewing machine. Nox, for his part, looks like he had fought a coat hanger and lost.
“…Are you good? Is it a bad time today?”
“Don’t.” He sighs. “Just don’t.”
──── ≪ (◎_◎;) ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ≫ ────
They finally found it. One place, one blessed shelf where the likes of vermin couldn't reach them. The shelf of all shelves, all hail the shelf.
Just in time, the key page lights up their little hidey hole and invites for a new adventure.
“Ah, perfect.” Violet dusts herself off. “Now we can finally go back to—”
A loud whiny cry interrupts her, as Henry seems to have realised for the fourth time that the shelf is unclimbable.
Violet closes her eyes for a moment, thinking blissfull murderous thoughts.
“Back to business.”
Nox tiredly rubs his face. “Fantastic.”
“Humans are so inattentive, I doubt—” she yawns. “—they won't even notice a difference.” She pauses, then swipes like there's invisible flies in her face.
“Vi,” Nox staggers over to her side. “We look like Death’s head upon a mopstick.”
“No reason to be morbid.” She starts unceremoniously shoving him towards the glowing key book.
Henry yowels again, pityingly but just loud enough to go straight into their ears. Then the footing underneath them shakes for a terrifying moment, like Henry has thrown itself against the shelf to let it feel its misery.
The book shakes, tilts and falls on its side — the key scrapes horribly on landing against the metal floor, before settling into dusty, fallen, defeat.
Their portal to the adventure lays mushed between the book and floor, creating a shining outline like the corpse in a crime scene.
Nox turns to her. “Can I be morbid now?”
Violet’s eye twitches. Which is a rather concerning sight, as Nox can count the number of times that Violet’s eyes has twitched before. They are few, but disturbingly memorable.
“Oh no.” Nox says.
Now, while Violet is an individual like any other good lady in high killer heels, she is still the physical manifestation of a villainess. Just like Silver enjoys singing to the morning birds despite her siblings’ many protests and Goldie gets a little gloom if he has not heroically saved someone this week, Violet has her own share of pitfalls.
Which is to say, no matter how cool, stylish, cunning, composed, classy or scheming she seems, at the end of the day, Violet is still a victim of her archetype — the kind with a tendency to drop all well schemed plans in the final act and blindly rush at her enemies with the hopes of tearing their heads clean off.
“I have had just enough of you!” Violet spins around with a green gleam in her eyes. “Coming in here with your yipping and scratching and SNORING! I did not even know I needed sleep, and yet now I crave it for every cursed moment you spent here!”
Violet marches over to the edge of the shelf, a pen the size of herself brandished like a spear in her grip. She aims and sends the spear carrening down towards its target.
The pen starts spinning mid air and bounces against Henry’s nose, where it harmlessly falls to the floor. Henry flicks its nose and tilts its head curiously.
Violet yanks a pencil case closer and continues her assault.
“Violet-”
“Help me, Nox!”
“Violet-”
“The humans can wait, I do not give a flying blasted rats SACK whether we miss their little WHATEVER ADVENTURE TODAY, THIS IS BLOODY WAR!”
“VIOLET, ITS DOING SOMETHING!”
Sure enough, the pencil rain seems to have inspired Henry to conquer a new frontier — not flee, as the keys may have wistfully hoped for — but instead to try out the exciting possibilities of long distance attack.
It looks at the base of the cheaply made, budget bound storage shelves of the public library and Nox can practically see the thoughts churning in its pea sized brain. These shelves are bought to handle a constant, static vertical force acted on it by the boxes - it is not bought to handle if something decided to use it as a swing set.
Henry may not understand the cutthroat economic priorities of a public funded library, but it does know that push = sway. So it gets up on two and starts violently shaking the shelf, like a bear would shake a bee nest off a tree.
It's not enough to crash the whole thing, but Nox and Violet get the delightful experience of what it must be like to be caught in an earthquake.
Nox was already standing just a little too close to the edge, as he was trying to figure out what the hell the vermin was scheming at now. But unlike Violet, he had not been lucky enough to anchor himself to a pencil case.
So, Nox stumbles, fumbles and falls forward.
Screaming, he falls for several feet and spins midair like one of Violet’s pencils, until he falls right into the open, waiting mouth of Henry.
It clamps its jaw shut around him, like several seatbelts from the roller coaster of doom immediately strapping him in. Nox’s upper body and feet poke awkwardly out through two large gaps between its teeth.
For a moment, Nox is the picture of stunned, terrified mouse caught by a very big cat. Then he realises his limbs are still attached and undented, and pure indignation overtakes him instead.
He twists around and slams on its stupid, big, STUPID snout.“Let me down!”
Henry plops back on all fours with a self satisfied chitter that’s muffled by its mouthfull of tin man.
“NOX!?”
“Violet, I want my outfit to have a fur coat from now on, you hear me!? Fur— aargh!”
Henry spins around and bolts, with Nox as its unwilling passenger. It bounds toward the boxes stacked against the wall and, in one swift motion, starts climbing. The window to the outside gets closer overhead.
Nox prides himself on his ability to put two and two together — and if he could sweat, this is the time he would start sweating. He slams his legs against its chin, rather uselessly, and yells. “Let me go, you flea infested mangral mutt!” He tries to catch a glimpse of the things underneath him as the ground rapidly gets further away. “Violet, HELP!”
He thinks Violet shouts something back, but it drowns below the vermin’s wheezing breath. For every jolt he feels as the vermin accends, a growl builts in his own throat. Nox pounces his fists against its teeth, “Let go of me, you-”
Pounce.
“Big-”
Pounce.
“Ugly-”
POUNCE.
“BRICKS FOR BRAINS!”
As his metaphorical blood pressure peaks, Nox unlocks the collective rage of his gaelic ancestors. Vocabulary, that he’s never even been taught, thanks to his whole orphan deal, comes crashing out of him. Every lesson Violet has ever drilled into his mind of proper posture, fine speech and so on and so fourth get booted out the backdoor in the same breath.
He yells at the top of his tiny lungs. “When yer get up in the mornin’, I bet yer look at yerself in the stinkin’ muck pool and think ‘ey, I’m a fuckin’ mangy gobshite of a raccoon who hasn't got a Ma, cos she clocked my eejit mug on first sight and my Da legged it too cos he wanted nothin' to do with A LANGY, BLEATHERING, ROBBING, WHISKERED, WORM EYED, MINGIN’ SHITEHAWK!”
This impressive display of rage and spiteful hatred condensed into human tongue manages to do what two entire weeks of villanious threats and thrown pens could not — it cuts just a little chip off of Henry’s pride and barrels through the language barrier through sheer force of vicious insult. It also does significant damage to Henry’s ears, though tragically mostly because of the volume.
Henry growls to hide its tears. In that moment, biting down on the loud little tin man sounds ever so tempting, though that will only gift it a tooth ache of horrible magnitudes. No, no. It has places to be, and it is going to be there.
With a swift jump and little scuttle of its butt, Henry slips out the window, succesfully kidnapping Nox. His cries of anger fade away with the wind.
Violet is left behind on the eight row of shelf twelve on aisle two, in a now empty Lost and Found. The vermin is gone to… God knows where by the time she even makes it down to the ground. She's in heels, don't judge her.
“Shit.” She hisses.
She spends several seconds staring at the insurmountable stair case leading up to the labyrinth of humans and sky scrapers and oh god her little brother just had to pick a fight with the first thing that looked at him funny, didn't he. He couldn't just have ruined its day and stomped on its favourite snacks in secret, no no no, of course not.
Forget a fur coat, he is getting the lousiest, most disgusting excuse for a half baked fashion dress, once she gets him back. It will have poorly made frills, it will be in cyan jaguar patterns, it will not have a boob window!
She yanks off her heels, tosses them to the side and starts climbing the boxes towards the open window.
──── ≪ (◎_◎;) ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ≫ ────
Meanwhile, Chase and Deacon are stuck in an undersea throne room, listening to the evil queen monologue at them, and waiting for the part where she turns into a dude.
Chase checks his arm for a nonexistent wrist watch.
“Do you think he knows fashionably late means sometime today? It doesn’t mean late late.”
Deacon sighs and turns to walk away. “He’s not bothering today, Chase. Again. Let’s just do the story.”
Chase yanks him back by the elbow. “Dorkin, he’s gonna be here any minute. Would you want me to abandon you to a bunch of weird-” he looks around and wrinkles his nose, “fishy people?”
“This is the fifth time.” Deacon looks at the glass ceiling for strength and mutters. “He’s gotten so bad at showing up.”
“Exactly. He’s gotta be just around the corner!”
“Yeah, not what I meant.”
──── ≪ (◎_◎;) ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ≫ ────
Henry carries Nox through town like its throwing a victory parade. Humans turn their heads to look, as it strouts down the side walk with a little spring in its step.
Nox hates his life. His fighting spirit has been licked, scratched, shaken and humiliated beyond all beliefs. At this point, he's just trying to play doll, so the passerby humans don’t get any funny ideas. He's just a normal tin man stewing in his own misery, nothing to see here people.
He closed his eyes several minutes ago, pretended he was anywhere else than here, and hasn't opened them since.
Though, when the town street gives away to gravel, then grass and a more few minutes pass without the sound of human chatter, he dares to look.
Before him is the most gaarish house he has ever laid his eyes upon. It looks like Chase’s god awful sticker collection threw up on a tea party and then invited the entire local fairy population to move in.
He yanks on Henry‘s whiskers. “Ho- how did you get into a book? No, when?! What, what the- the dickens name kind of abomination spit out of Satan’s left nipple and left to- marinate in tears of eejit robins are you!?”
Henry jumps into a sprint, beelining for the picket fence framing the pink fairy tale house. Nox holds onto its teeth for dear life.
“Answer me, you idiot mutt!”
Shoving itself through a hole in the fence, Henry sprints into the garden. It swerves its head from left to right, looking for something, while simultaneously succeeding at making Nox horribly car sick.
It spots a human over by the tree line, someone small and crouched, like they're digging in the dirt for bugs.
Nox gets exactly two seconds for his stomach to down ten feet below him. He launches a final desperate assault on the raccoon’s face, so Violet at least has something worthwhile to write on his gravestone. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—”
Henry beelines with all the glee and innocent purpose of a hunting dog returning to its owner with a kill. Nox’s rant peeters out, as soon as—
Prunella turns around. She has her hands deep in a pile of sticks and leaves, with a small bucket full of snails(?) next to her. The little house she was building collapses, as Henry bulldozes through it. Its tail wags a mile a minute.
Then, like he's nothing more than a discarded chew toy, it spits Nox into Prunella’s hands.
“Agent, did you get the melons— woah!”
Gravity disappears once again, as he is lifted up into the sunlight. Uselessly, he tries to grasp the hand holding him around his middle.
Her eyes meets Nox’s, who imagines himself as a rock. Cool and uncaring, as it steadily sinks down into the cold, dark, unforgiving deep, where no one may perceive it.
She stares.
He stares.
“Buddy?”
He scoffs very convincingly. “Buddy? Who’s this Buddy?”
A long pause.
“I- I don’t know any Buddy.” He wishes for death.
He's been having a really good streak of good behaviour lately, it's almost a week since he chased a child up a tree. If Santa Clause could come down and clobber his head off, that would be much appreciated.
Oh right… he, he did chase her up a tree, didn't he? He may have done that.
He pats her much larger hand. “There, there.”
“What are you doing?”
He stops. “Nothing.”
They fall into a standstill.
Then, Prunella puts him down. He sways from suddenly having his legs serve their purpose again and looks owlishly up at her.
“I-”
Immediately the raccoon snakes around her legs and pounces on him—
Prunella catches Henry midair, and it lets out a confused mewl as she hangs it on her arms like a wet blanket.
“You're smaller in real life.” She says.
Nox says nothing, he thinks his mouth stopped working.
“Chase says it's bad to pick up the keys when they don't want to be.”
Nox nods numbly.
“Silver says Chase threw her against a wall when they first met.” She says. “So, I still win.”
“Y- you… win?” He manages.
“Yup.” She holds up a fist. “I've thrown zero keys.”
“Uhm- well done?”
“Thanks.” She says. “Chase makes houses for all the keys. Except Bronze, he sleeps in a oven mitt, cause he’s weird. He made Goldie a house and I drew on it. Goldie said he liked it.”
“Okay?” Nox wonders if she would stop him if he made a run for it.
“He's weird. But he's nice. Mostly weird.”
“Ch-Chase is?"
“Yeah.”
Despite himself, a smile tugs at the corner of Nox’s lip. “He is weird.”
Prunella tilts her head. “What key are you—”
Seeing as his presence has been ignored for sixteen whole lines, Henry starts scratching at Prunella’s arm for attention. The lighter air clatters to the ground and Nox’s fight and flight mode kicks back into gear.
Prunella kisses its forehead and it turns back into wet blanket. “Good job, agent.”
Then she seems to notice Nox’s tiny fighting stance and frowns. “You were supposed to be bigger.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Prunella looks away, suddenly very interested in her sleeve.
“Pru.” His eyes glance between her and the raccoon, who seems so very pleased to have come home with a fair game. “What is that supposed to mean!?”
She pouts. “You were supposed to be bigger, not get bullied by him.”
In that moment, all other thoughts on Nox’s mind became smoke and the size difference ceased to matter, as he gapes at the little girl who’s— she— the two most humiliating weeks of his life— she had—
“DID YOU SICC YOUR PET ON ME LIKE A SNIFFER DOG!?”
“…maybe.”